Cultural Marxism Journal 001
(After watching Beyonce's Lemonade video. Started having a lot of realisation about gender and why men are the problem.) Cultural Marxism (CM) as a manifesto begins here, with my intense Aries (aka Aspergers) thoughts spewing out in a torrent of thoughts that has distracted me for the last 3 hours, meaning I am still yet to watch the rest of the Lemonade video. (note: this type of inattention and distractability is typical spectrum behaviour according to psychology, I call it passion) Gender - Everything has a gender. The most advanced cultures have known this for a long time, and many modern cultures chose to reflect the gender in their language. Language - English has no gender, we think of the world as an object, with no subjectivity to words. This is binary logic. Words have a meaning. We expect a single meaning and when their is complexity we teach to deal with these exceptions to the rule. - Other languages choose to throw out the rules. To realise that language is evolving every day and there are no rules. Language is the one thing that is the most clear indicator of a culture, because our language is shaped by our culture and at the same time our language also shapes our culture. - If you live in an area where offensive language is thrown around readily, then you live in a neighbourhood that will reflect that culture. A neighborhood full of separation and anger, rather than community and togetherness. - But we create our culture. - We have been told for so long that culture isn't up to us. But now we are in the new millenium and we've long realised that no one cares about who is leading our country, all we care about is who is leading our culture. - We are fascinated by all people who represent our aspirations and what we wish to be. But we are also sucked in by it, and in a culture like ours we end up with a lot of unrealistic ideals of femininity and masculinity just poisoning us all with a belief we aren't good enough. - And the thing that we can't escape is that their is no real enemy, because we are all one. We are all products of our culture. Yes, we all have different individual cultures and family dynamics and social positions, but fundamentally we are all living in the same world and from the angle of any culture, we can all see that the world is fucked up. - We are all victims of a montrous culture that has grown so far out of proportion that it is canniballising itself. - We started out just trying to survive, each clan just wanting to keep their children safe, so they join forces and form a community. - For a long time this worked, but then as the community bonds, they grow and they become more productive and then more efficient and then more productive, and they consume more and more resources as their farms and mills grow, and then just like Age of Empires it comes to a stage where other clans want to kill you. - You can't blame them. It was kill or be killed. Sometimes if you didn't strike first, they would not be merciful. Imagine living in Game of Thrones and you know Dothraki are out there raiding and killing. Do you sit and wait? Or do you gather strength? You grow and you build an army to protect yourself. And if you're strong you survive if you're weak you don't. - But now time has passed and we are in a globalised world. Old enemy countries were forced to Ally for the first times Patriarchy Men are the problem. It's not because we actively support the patriarchy. Most of us don't. But we are fucking paralysed by it. We are paralysed into the belief that we are not good enough. The relationship between father and son has been utterly destroyed by 40 hour work weeks 5 days a week, and tired, exhausted dads coming home each night with no energy to pretend everything's ok. So rather than bring everyone else down, he avoids. He is avoidant of his emotions because he can't face the fact of telling his family he can't handle the pressure, that he's afraid, that the world scares him. We are hammered with this notion that men need to be the protector and to always show strength, never show weakness, never show vulnerability. And so this is the role model we end up with for masculinity: our fathers. Whose fathers or grandfathers struggled with the same feelings of avoidance, but during times of war, times when the pressure on men to be strong was palpable, when our countries needed brave, strong men, Age of Aries (war) But our cultures never corrected for this propaganda after the world war. Western culture didn't take the moment after the war to repair the families affected and care for the emotional and physical trauma the war inflicted on us. Instead, the culture began to capitalise on this new breed of men. It diverted our attention to exciting new jobs and ways to make money and rebuild the broken economy of our countries, so that our enemy's don't recover quicker than us and come back to get their cultural revenge. (similar to Japan and China) - Cultural memory goes back to the prior pain and loss of our ancestors, even long after their deaths, our culture always mourns. Hence why we as Australians all feel a deep sense of loss at the Anzac story. The thought of hundreds of thousands of young Aussie blokes, most raised on farms and used to a simple life, suddenly being slapped into uniforms with a gun at your side and sent into war. We can picture their stories, because we have re-lived them, our culture reflects its history, our family's recover from our past wounds and grow from our recovery. - We have never been allowed to recover from WWI. We are all still in grief. The entire world is consumed by the grief of war, and we don't realise it. - There is no evil illuminati controlling anything. There is only you and I. Everyone is just like you and I. We are all just people. Whether it's the main on the street begging for change, or the terrorist suicide bomber. We all have our reasons and our stories. And they are all impacted by our culture. - But what we fail to realise is that culture no longer divides us. We are all part of the same culture = a global culture. Our governments can try to separate us from this, by protecting our borders and limiting our media, whether through government control of the channels or channels it has privatized for efficiency, the government tries to protect our culture from the world. But humans are social creatures, and from the day merchants set saii to distant lands in the birth of mercantile capitalism, our cultures have been interacting in ways they never had before. Mercantile Capitalism and Colonialism - The birth of the middle class meant that there were people who can afford to not work, and who can also afford not to care about keeping us safe. A class that was suddenly free to create their own innovations and drive a new economy, but whose fundamental purpose in society was unclear. Rulers, _____ and Workers. What are we in the middle? - So naturally this was an uncomfortable position for the rulers, because historically this class had won their position as merchants through revolution, but once we were given the right to trade we became competitive amongst each other again. A class system developed between merchants. The local merchants were given benefits over foreigners, to help keep the profits within the community. But then this creates a necessary xenophobia, which continues to this day. - The world is multicultural, but not by choice. Every country tries it's best to hold onto it's dominant culture, but the economics of globalisation meant that if you didn't trade heavily with emerging markets and establish infrastructure there, then enemies will and sooner or later you will be in their target as just another "emerging market" in the ongoing turf wars between the different cultures. - The mercantile boom set globalisation in motion immediately and ever since then Empires were now no longer defined by hard boundaries, because trading with enemies became economically efficient even if tensions were still high. But a period of peace followed naturally because all of a sudden trade routes were finding new lands, with new resources and new opportunities to set up ports and cities and expand our empires. This period gave birth to Magellan, Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus. The brave captains who sailed over stormy seas halfway across the world to find new lands before the enemy and to claim those resources for the motherland. - Little did Italy's Christopher Columbus know that the the northern part of the Americas he found would then be used as a place to exile all of Britain's political prisoners. Who would later rebel and overthrow the Commonwealth government that ruled them in the American Revolutionary War, beginning with the Declaration of Independence. American Revolution - America is a country founded on revolution. A country whose very essence is the spirit of revolution. They were a country formed under tyranny: a country of ex-convicts from British gaols who were too politically sensitive to execute anymore due to public revolt, but too dangerous to keep in the UK. - So they sent them to the US. And there they changed their story. They sold them the dream of freedom and opportunity. To keep order they tried to divide the newly freed convicts amongst themselves, they gave special authority and societal position to any who chose to assimilate. Cultures that refused to assimilate were deemed dangerous and put at the bottom of the social hierarchy. This is the source of US racism. It was a deliberate tactic to divide the former revolutionaries from a unified group into "English revolutionaries" and "Irish revolutionaries". By giving English convicts priority in the new world, they established a class system amongst the once unified workers. - Now America's kick-ass revolutionary spirit has long since bounced back from Britain's rule and eventually climbed to the top of the world, to stand above it's former ruler proudly and roar. But even though they defeated their enemy, the US was still wounded deeply. It was now a divided nation. Whose very constitution says "United we stand. Divided we fall". But if you look at the founding fathers who wrote that constitution, guess how many of them were Irish? - Racism was now imbedded in American culture, to feed it's own class system. But as a culture of revolutionaries, this class system was untenable, why would the Irish revolutionaries sit and accept their position as the lower class.. - So the natural solutions to pacify a second internal rebellion between the English-Americans and Irish-Americans were to either remove the racial barriers imbued in their society and work together, or to introduce a new class below the Irish and other non-English: African slaves. - Modern America - Celebrity culture. Queen Bee. All about dominance. Because each celebrity has their clan, their ideological supporters. Girls like Taylor Swift are lauded, while Miley's and Kim Kardashian's are shamed because they are negative representations of American culture. The American media of the 50's was a very different world, they dominated the world through culture, through dominance of people's entertainment. They revived from WWI quickest and best, and they got all the technological advances that came with the war, including both quantum and nuclear physics. - Industry fueled innovation and new industries continually popped up. War fuels new technology and then new technology fuels new industries and a stronger society and this requires expansion, but the strength of one relies on the weakness of others. Countries like Germany who didn't come out well in the war economically, and who actually ended up being used as a lesson in economic sabotage to prevent them ever threatening Britain and the allies ever again. - Meanwhile, the war was started due to the territory wars being fought by the nearest cultural empires. - Some are more united than others, Britain is still hated by Ireland and partially by the Scots and Welsh, but all ally together to defeat the common enemies in the east. After WW1 War and Recovery With no time ever given to our cultures to grieve, we were flung from wars to economic booms and then back into wars, then back into booming economies. All the while, the discipline that has been trained into the culture from war is used to fuel the economy. Society now being easy to organise and control. Schools become factories for young workers and the state works to provide workers for the industrialist capitalists and in exchange working class families are provided with new jobs, offering millions of new opportunities for anyone with a high education (higher social class) to make money. The majority of soldiers who actually went to war and entered combat weren't highly educated and hence they had to work twice as hard for the same jobs. So the families most hurt by war are never given time to grieve, because their father's have to now go and fight for work to put food on the table. Never time to rest, to be vulnerable. Our fathers were forced to fight for our family's survival. Since the threat of war is still looming and we need to expand and recover and dominate new markets before our enemies do. And so our fathers, fresh from war with all of the terror of seeing their friends and brothers killed, of having to kill other men just like themselves fighting for their own wives and children. The atrocity and horror of war, only to come back home and find no government support. No time to recuperate and grieve. Only new jobs for men who are willing to take them. But the same then became true for the upper class, for the first time they were found to be competing for the same jobs as the working class. The nature of post-war booms are "survival of the fittest" and class no longer bought the same privilege unless you could back it up with strength. And so the father's of the upper class were, too, forced to fight to survive or watch their family fall down the social ladder. (Think Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones) Television Culture Culture slipped out of the grasp of the state after the advent of TV. We choose what we consume. And the market is forced to adapt to our demands or be replaced by competitors who will. Just look at iTunes and Spotify. At Cable TV vs Netlfix. Culture controls society more than even the school system does today. This is why it is so critical that our cultural attention is diverted to celebrities. The rich and famous. By having icons who inspire us, cultural role models, we are able to strive together as a culture towards the values of these celebrities. This is also the role of sports stars. Showing how we can perservere beyond our limits and push to new heights. From it's inception in the US, TV was used to shape American culture. Look at a 60's show like Bewitched and you could think that post-WW2 America was the happiest place on earth. Perfect families with perfect lives and strong values were consistently pushed by the leaders to try to bring the American people together into a desirable society. Masculinity in Shatters But post-WW2 America was not what they showed on movie screens. Families were still torn apart and sons now had two generations of fathers who were in grief and forced to stay strong for the sake of the family. Forced to bottle up their emotions and just do what they can to provide a better life for their kids than they had. Kids that they don't know how to talk to, because they never got a chance to see them while they were at war. Fathers who were never taught "how to be a dad" because their dads were at war or work as well. We are a generation of men raised to be strong, whose fathers only ever showed us their strength and were terrified of showing their weakness. Even if that means showing anger. Or violence. We have no model for how to be a sensitive man. How to balance our femininity and our masculinity and embrace our wholeness. The only model we have is that of gay men. Homophobia and Sexism Homophobia was essential to keeping men strong during times of war. An army is a huge gathering of men, united against a common enemy. The sexual energy of the men is used to strengthen their willpower. By separating men from women, they can be made into thick-skinned warriors capable of taking the lives of other humans to protect the people they love. But if homosexuality spreads within an army then this energy is being released, discipline is lost because who wants to follow orders when you could be making love! Homosexuality in an army is a threat as serious as drug addiction. All armies recognise that soldiers will engage in both activities, but in order to maintain discipline and keep the army strong, it's necessary to strongly penalise both activities. Hence, men returning from war are deeply entrenched in the homophobia that accompanies it. An army needs its essence to be pure Yang energy, or else it will have its weaknesses exploited by a more Yang enemy. So it is necessary in times of war to shame femininity in men. Shame This shame, instead of then being healed after war (with psychological services provided to the men to help them recover their ability to feel, to express emotion) was instead capitalised on, and the advertising world boomed. Men's shame at their own weaknesses was used to drive the economy after each war. With a strong national urgency to keep the economy growing before our enemies catch up to us. So we collectively formed a culture where men are lauded for their strength and perserverance and courage, and where men who show weakness and vulnerability are stigmatised. All for the good of the economy and to protect ourselves from our enemies. Class Boundaries Disentegrating What happens to families after war? Not only the lower class, but the upper class were also subjected to the same cultural brainwashing about what being a man means. By the time of WW2 our cultures were already too diversified to have clear class boundaries any more. Our countries were forced to form a national identity, and this identity universally focused on strong men. So, now all our fathers are affected, and the increasing competition of post-war booming economies mean that men more and more begin to associate their value as a human with their career and how much they can provide for their families. So homophobia becomes a means of making men always scared to be anything but masculine. Meanwhile, the private industries capitalised on this and promotes more and more new products to show off your success, profiteering on the homophobia Sure, richer kids could Masculinity Reborn The only true masculinity comes from defending your beliefs. No matter how macho or tough a man looks, or how successful he is, or how many beautiful women he can attract, if he does not understand himself then he is not a man. Manhood comes from understanding who you are and that means rejecting what our parents think we should be, or our society tells us to be. It means being man enough to embrace your femininity. Being a man means recognising that our biological sex does not define who we are. True masculinity can only come when we have outgrown our homophobia. This is the reason why gay rights have been such a critical issue for so long. So many of us think "who cares?", why do people care so much about other people's sexuality? It's because these same people don't want to look inside and deal with their own sexuality. This is not the same as 'sexual orientation'. Sexuality and Repression Sexuality is the merging of Yin and Yang, finding union between our masculine side and our feminine side and transcending binary thinking to embrace both sides of ourselves as neither weaker nor stronger than the other, but two parts of an inseparable whole. The people who are the most homophobic are the ones who have repressed their own femininity the most, and who are the most afraid of their own femininity - what they see as their weaknesses. Their shame. Sometimes these people will externalise their internal division and feel the need to stigmatise femininity in others to validate their own repression. Extreme examples might be men who violently assault random gay men, or more commonly men who yell and scream at their wives when they're angry. On the other end of the spectrum are the men who internalise their repression. Who don't devalue femininity, but are instead drawn to it, but who are too ashamed of "not being man enough" to let go of their own internalised homophobia, their internalised sexism that keeps them from becoming a man. Alpha and Beta roles Since society at large still values strong males, our cultural idols still reflect this and hence we consider the more aggressive men as dominant or "alpha". The men who internalise their repression are left paralysed in their own self-doubt and internalise a belief that they need to be "more alpha" = stronger. They don't realise that true strength comes from being who you are, not being what society tells you to be. So, the aggressive alphas are rewarded in our culture and the betas escape. And hence, masculinity has been left to the wolves for decades now. In the 80's we saw the birth of the psychopath, as the alphas took on a level of aggression that no longer showed any care for anyone but themselves, including family. The Wolf of Wall Street or American Psycho are equally appropriate examples, though different ends of the spectrum. Resistance But all along, we had cultural icons who went against these rigid definitions of masculinity. This last month we lost two of the most prominent: David Bowie and Prince. Reminding us at a time we needed them more than ever that being a man does not preclude being effeminate. That in fact, this was sexy and more attractive than any other model of manhood, because it was authentic. Unsorted From here on unsorted Germany and WW1 - So countries like Germany get put into the same position as the village that is raided and robbed. Do they slowly work their way back up and wait and hope it doesn't happen again. Or do they stand up strong and say "fuck you" to the world that screwed them over. The world that got caught in a mad game of musical chairs where the players are empires and the chairs are countries. Fathers and Sons No matter which culture we are from we are all united by the collective grief of war. The collective cultural memory that someone took our fathers away, and in some cases raped and killed our mothers. We are a culture still in recovery from war. The effects of WW1 and WW2 and Vietnam all still linger in the world's cultural memory, even if it was been a long period of relative peace between Vietnam and 2003. Generational Grief and Genocide What kind of person would you be if your entire family was murdered when you were a child? This is the mindset you need to be in to understand the effects of history on culture. You don't ask Jewish people to "get over the holocaust", why do Americans still ask black people to "get over slavery" or Australians say aboriginals need to "get over colonialism" and the massacres of their people and culture, their stolen children and raped mothers, their murdered fathers and the fathers that survived, only by agreeing to serve the very culture that murdered his brothers and raped his wife. We all know grief tears families apart, which is why we all feel such deep pain when we hear of a parent burying their own child. Or a family burying their mother too soon. Our instinct as humans is to help those people and provide them with support. But in the case of aboriginals in Australia and Africans in America, their communities have always received less support from the government. Can you imagine doing that in your day-to-day life? It's like if someone in your social group, but near the bottom of the hierarchy, had depression. And instead of the group collectively nurturing their friend and helping them recover, deciding to stop including them in social activities, and when they show up looking for their friends and some empathy, you collectively telling them they need to "get over it" and "move on". Category:Philosophy 2016 Category:Theories 2016 Category:Ideas